Well folks, something that was once thought impossible is now happening. Bandai Namco has announced that the latest installment in the Gundam Versus series will be heading westward this Fall. No specific release date has been given at this time, but if you’re interested, I’d just take a highlighter to all of September, October, and November, just to be safe. Here’s the trailer from Bandai Namco America:

And for those of you from Europe:

For those of you new to the larger Gundam Versus series, they are 2v2 brawlers that allow you to pick from at least one mobile suit from every television series and even side stories that have never been animated such as Hathaway’s Flash and Crossbone. And then once you and your opponents(Be they actual players or AI) have selected your machines, a map will be selected and you fight until your reinforcement points are depleted. The first team to deplete their points loses. Reinforcement points are usually automatically set to 6000(But can be adjusted for lower or higher values.). How many points you lose per death is decided by what mobile suit you’re using as each suit has an assigned point value based on its power. These point values can range from 500 to 3000. Suits with point values of 500 and 1000 are cannon fodder suits, ones that don’t have a lot of power and health and will die easily if struck by just about anything. However, in the hands of a skilled player, they can become a force to be reckoned with as it will take them longer to lose a match, a war of attrition basically. And 3000 point suits are your more OP suits like the Unicorn, Wing Zero, and 00 Gundam’s. They’re powerful and have lots of health, but they’re so expensive that they only need to die twice in order to lose a match. It’s a risk and reward scenario, trade longevity for power. And then of course there are the inbetween point values of 2000 and 2500(And maybe 1500, I’m not sure what Maxi Boost and Force introduced, 500 is something I read about somewhere.) which are more balanced. Something to watch for though is that because these are team battles, your ally’s death counts towards the same point pool, and as a result you could end up with remaining reinforcement points that aren’t enough for yours or your ally’s suit and that will respawn you at lower health depending on how many points over you are.

The final game will have somewhere between 40 and 100 mobile suits at launch with more to come via DLC over the following years. If you pre-order the game you’ll receive an additional MS, the Hot Scramble Gundam, which is from the Build Fighters Try AR manga. Digital pre-orders will also received a theme for their PS4.